Our collective journey right now is a difficult one. Who do we believe? What are the hard truths we will have to face? Will we see more deaths because of the COVID-19 pandemic? Will our children safe in school? Will there be an effective and safe vaccine we can trust? Will our elections be tampered with by foreign enemies or even by our own home grown terrorists? Because chaos begets chaos and because hate begets hate and because uncertainty is a type of terrorism, we must unite to seek the truth. We cannot continue to allow anyone to divide us. We must unbury the American values we cherished so much. What happened to how we deplored big brother watching us, political coups, injustice, bigotry and leaders who lied to their people? Our country lived by values. We cherished our constitutional rights, our civil rights and liberties. What has happened to us? We were not perfect. But we knew about basic decency. We always knew what was the right thing to do for the good of us all. We the People must be the force of goodness, empathy, and compassion. We are all exhausted. We need positive energy to carry on our most valued right. The right to vote. These last few days I feel like I am in a labyrinth and here with the help of Pixabay I have tried to illustrate my poem.
I just heard the news that Ruth Bader Ginsburg has passed. The “Notorious RBG” was a strong and courageous woman. She served all people. My heart breaks because she was a role model for so many women my age. She made America a better place. We were so lucky to have her. God bless her. My condolences to her family and the thousands of women that emulated her.
Remember “Women belong where decisions are being made.”
After watching such terrifying images of the destruction caused by the fires on the west coast of the USA, I tried to put myself in the place of the victims and simply start shaking at the thought. It saddened me so much to hear about the number of deaths including a young child. I believe that climate change is the ultimate culprit for these calamities.
I wonder if we will be able to reverse the damage so far. Three states are suffering from the fires and who knows how many people will end up with serious respiratory illnesses in the weeks to come. Louisiana is soon facing yet another possible hurricane. Puerto Rico has to deal with the sand storms that come from the Sahara. You have to see it to believe that so much soot can accumulate within just a few days. The island has also experienced several earthquakes as have so many other places.
We can only hope that science will figure out what needs to be done. We know what we can do to help the situation. During the pandemic shut down, many cities were observing how the environment seemed cleaner. Obviously, there were less cars on the roads and therefore less pollution. It simply makes sense the more we work together the better the results. Sometimes it takes something like a pandemic to help us see reality.
Racial tensions augmented during these last few months. All races came together to stand up for racial justice. I recently reread a copy of James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time. I had underlined these quotes so many years ago when I first read his work and which still resonates today.
“Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death–ought to decide, indeed, to earn one’s death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible for life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return.”
“And if the word integration means anything, this is what it means: that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it.”
― James Baldwin
Life only happens once. And for those who believe we reincarnate it still happens one life at a time and within a specific time. I hope and believe that we can make life better for each other when we decide to accept that each of us is deserving of a good life, a healthy existence, a peaceful coexistence. I still hope that we awaken to the essence of our oneness. Are you ready?
